Reform and a New American Culture



Reform and a New American Culture

15.1 -- The Reforming Spirit

READ - pgs 434 – 437

Why does this matter to me, an 8th grader at East ?

A plant that does not grow and change dies; a nation that cannot adapt and change can never flourish. Many of the things we take for granted today – women’s right to vote, medical help for the mentally ill, free public schools, and freedom from slavery – are goals that reformers fought for during this time period. At the same time reformers worked for social change, American writers and artists initiated a creative revolution, leaving behind the old European influences to shape a uniquely American expression. Painters, poets, novelists, and essayists developed original styles based on the American landscape and society.

Time Line:

Early 1800s – The Second Great Awakening starts

1831 – The famous publisher William Lloyd Garrison started publishing his

famous newspaper The Liberator

1837 – Education reform is led by Horace Mann in Massachusetts

1837 – Interesting Fact – The first kindergarten was started in Europe

1837 – Panic of 1837 – financial panic caused by Jackson’s domestic policies

1841 – Dorothea Dix begins crusade to improve treatment of the mentally ill

1848 – 1st Convention on Women’s Rights meets in Seneca Falls, New York

Elizabeth Cady Stanton takes control

1851 – Herman Melville publishes Moby Dick

Main Idea:

Between 1820 and 1860, a wide variety of reform movements sprang up to improve conditions in the United States.

Vocabulary:

social reform – an organized attempt to improve what is unjust or imperfect in society

predestination – Protestant idea that GOD decided in advance in which people would attain salvation after death

Second Great Awakening – widespread religious movement in the US in the early 1800s

revival – huge outdoor religious meeting

debtor – person who cannot pay money he or she owes

temperance movement – campaign against alcohol consumption

Setting the Scene:

Two reporters entered the small, ordinary looking brick hut. Opening a trapdoor in the floor, they peered down the dark shaft of an abandoned copper mine. Nervously, they climbed 50 feet down an old wooden ladder until they reached the bottom.

“Lighting the candles… I led the way down a series of stone steps…

The roof was very low, and the candle gave so little light, that I was

compelled to feel my way forward with my walking-stick… I groped

forward twenty or thirty feet into the caverns…

where the prisoners used to sleep.” Quoted in Phelps, Newgate of Connecticut

Years earlier, these cramped caves served as Connecticut’s state prison, Newgate. It was shut down in 1827.

In the mid-1800s, some Americans began to condemn the way prisoners were treated. Prison reform was just one of the many movements that sprang up to cure the nation’s ills.

Presidents:

|1st |1789 |– |1797 |2 terms |George Washington - 57 |

|2nd |1797 |– |1801 |1 term |John Adams - 61 |

|3rd |1801 |– |1809 |2 terms |Thomas Jefferson - 57 |

|4th |1809 |– |1817 |2 terms |James Madison - 57 |

|5th |1817 |– |1825 |2 terms |James Monroe – 58 |

|6th |1825 |– |1829 |1 term |John Quincy Adams - 57 |

|7th |1829 |– |1837 |2 terms |Andrew Jackson - 61 |

|8th |1837 |– |1841 |1 term |Martin Van Buren - 54 |

|9th |1841 |– |1841 |Died |William Henry Harrison - 68 |

|10th |1841 |– |1845 |1 term |John Tyler - 51 |

|11th |1845 |– |1849 |1 term |James K Polk - 49 |

|12th |1849 |– |1850 |Died |Zachary Taylor - 64 |

|13th |1850 |– |1853 |1 term |Millard Fillmore - 50 |

|14th |1853 |– |1857 |1 term |Franklin Pierce - 48 |

|15th |1857 |– |1861 |1 term |James Buchanan - 65 |

|16th |1861 |– |1865 |2 terms |Abraham Lincoln - 52, assassinated in office |

17th 1865 – 1869 1 term Andrew Johnson - 57

18th 1869 – 1877 2 terms Ulysses Simpson US Grant - 47

The Reforming Impulse

( Had both political and religious roots; social reform

|THE REFORM MOVEMENT |

|Political Origins |Religious Influences |

|( The ideas of liberty and equality in the Declaration of |( Second Great Awakening stressed free will rather than predestination|

|Independence inspired people to try to improve society |( Revivals encouraged people to reform their lives |

|( During Jackson era, more people could vote than ever before |( Finney taught that individual salvation was the first step to reform|

|( Critics said slavery and other injustices violated democratic |of a society |

|ideals | |

( Political Ideals

( Politics was becoming more democratic

( More and more people could vote and take part in government

← Critics, known as reformers, argued a true democracy would not allow slavery and it would make male and female rights be equal

( Reformers wanted the nation to align with their political views

← The Second Great Awakening

( During the colonial era, many American Protestants believed in predestination

← This belief led many people to worry that they could do nothing to be ‘saved’

← In the early 1800s, a dynamic religious movement swept through the nation;

Second Great Awakening

( They taught that individuals could choose to save their own souls

( Preachers stirred this feeling with revivals

← Revivals lasted for days and attracted thousands of people

“The vast sea of human beings seemed to be agitated as if by a storm. I counted seven ministers all preaching at once… Some of the people were singing, others praying, some crying for mercy.” James B Finley, Autobiography

( Charles Grandison Finney, a very powerful orator, taught individual salvation was the first step toward ‘complete reformation of the whole world’

( Inspired new efforts to improve society

¿¿ How did the push for social reform during the 1800s begin ?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

Hospital and Prison Reform

( One of the most vigorous social reformers was Dorothea Dix

( A Boston school teacher

( She focused her reform efforts on the ‘outsiders’; criminals and the mentally ill

← Reforms for the Mentally Ill

( In 1841, Dix visited a jail for women in Boston

( She discovered that some prisoners were not criminals but mentally ill

( Locked away in small, dark, unheated cells

( They were considered to be ‘lunatics’

( Over an 18 month period, Dix visited jails, poorhouses, and hospitals

← Her horrible discoveries, persuaded legislators to fund mental hospitals

“I proceed, gentlemen, briefly to call your attention to the present

state of Insane Persons confined… in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.”

Dorothea Dix, “Memorial to the States Legislatures of Massachusetts”

( She did not stop with Massachusetts, she went to jails in Louisiana and Illinois, filing persuasive reports to the respective legislatures to treat the mentally ill and patients, not criminals

← Prison Reform

( Dix and others joined together to improve conditions in prisons

( Crammed together in cold damp rooms with no food; unless they had money to buy food from the jailers ( corruption )

( 5 out of 6 people in Northern jails were debtors

( While in jail, you could not earn money to pay off debt, so you stayed in jail

← Changes in this system, led by Dix and others, resulted in prison cells that housed only one or two inmates

( Cruel punishment was to be banned

( Minor crimes received shorter sentences

( Slowly, states stopped treating debtors as criminals

The Temperance Movement

( In the early 1800s, alcohol abuse was widespread

( Drinking occurred at political rallies, weddings, funerals, anywhere

( Men…women…children… all drank and sometimes drank heavily

( Whiskey was sold at barbershops and candy stores

( Toward the end of the 1820s, women took the lead role against alcohol;

temperance movement

( Women believed the ‘Demon Rum’ led to wife-beating, child abuse, and family breakups

( Their 1st victory over alcohol came in 1851 when Maine banned the sale of alcohol; 8 others states followed with similar anti-alcohol laws

( Most states repealed the laws, but the movement continued

Improving Education

( Few children attended school

( Only Massachusetts required free public school; paid for by the community

( Teachers were poorly trained and poorly paid

( Reformers acted to improve education

( They argued a republic required educated citizens

( Girls and boys were usually taught together in elementary school, in high school, however, they were often separated

( New technologies, such as the invention of the steel pen and the blackboard, changed classrooms in the 1800s

( Physical punishment was common in schoolrooms. A popular saying advised…”Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child”

← Growth of Public Schools

( 1841, New York passed laws requiring local governments to set up tax supported school districts

( Horace Mann became the head of the Massachusetts Board of Education

( Mann got the legislature to provide money to build new schools,

extend the school year, and raise teacher’s pay

( Massachusetts opened three colleges to ‘train’ teachers

( By the 1850s, most Northern states had set up ‘free’ tax-supported

elementary schools

← Schools in the South improved slowly

( Schooling mostly consisted of 1st thru 8th grades

( Few public ‘free’ high schools

← Education for African Americans

( Most areas did not provide schools for African American children

( Prudence Crandall tried to create a school for African American girls, but it was destroyed

( 1854, Pennsylvania chartered the 1st African American male college

← Educating People with Disabilities

( 1817, Thomas Gallaudet (gal uh DEHT) set up a deaf school in Connecticut

( 1832, Samuel Gridley Howe founded the 1st school for the blind

← He used ‘raised letters’ to allow students to read with their fingers

( Laura Bridgeman, was the first deaf and blind student to receive a formal education

¿¿ What reforms were made in education ?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

1. How did political and religious ideals provide inspiration for reform ?

Political_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Religious___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

2. Why did Dorothea Dix seek to reform the treatment of prisoners and

the mentally ill ?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

3. What were the goals of the temperance movement ?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

4. How did reformers improve American education ?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

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